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Sunday, 19 August 2012

Game Mechanics Revealed: Dual Cannons vs. Dual Heavy Cannons

Welcome to Game Mechanics Revealed.Star Trek Online is filled with vagaries; the
devs are not forthcoming with clarification; the forums are a source of
confusing and contradictory knowledge; the chats are rife with conjecture and
misinformation.In this series, I will
attempt to find the answers and dispel the myths that plague our game.

My partner in science is the ever patient and ever
enthusiastic @JeanLPicard.

While dual heavy cannons are the standard armament of
escorts everywhere, some players contend that the increased rate of fire of
dual cannons leads to an increase in proc rate, and that therefore regular dual
cannons are a more effective weapon despite dual heavy cannons’ 10% bonus to
critical damage.The dual cannons also
have a smaller energy drain penalty, which some speculate might be more
important than the critical hit bonus of dual heavy cannons.

Premise 1

According to the tooltip info, dual cannons have twice the
rate of fire as dual heavy cannons, with the same dps.Therefore the proc rate of the dual cannons
should be twice that of dual heavy cannons.

Experiment 1

The aggressor is armed with 4 phaser dual cannons.At a long range and low weapon power, the
aggressor fires for 5 minutes at the target, and the number of times the
target’s systems go offline is counted.The test is repeated with 4 phaser dual heavy cannons.

Results 1

Systems Offline

Test

Dual Cannons

Dual Heavy Cannons

1

12

5

Pretty clear cut, isn’t it?But that’s why we test with large sample sizes.Here’s the full table.

Systems Offline

Test

Dual Cannons

Dual Heavy Cannons

1

12

5

2

8

7

3

6

10

4

13

12

5

10

13

Total

49

47

Analysis 1

It’s been 6 years since I’ve done any advanced statistics,
so I’m only about 40% sure I’m using the right statistical analysis tool for
this.

Null hypothesis, Ho, is that the two means of the number of
procs are the same, or u1 – u2 = 0.Therefore the alternate hypothesis, Ha, is that the two means are not
the same, or u1 – u2 ≠ 0.We wil compare
the outcome with Student’s t distribution.There are 5 data points per sample, implying 5 + 5 -2 =8 degrees of
freedom and we are using a two-tailed test, Ta/2(8) = 2.306 at the 95%
confidence interval.Therefore we will
reject the null hypothesis if t > 2.306.

n

5

5

average

9.8

9.4

sample standard deviation

2.863564

3.361547

sample variance

8.2

11.3

Pooled s^2

9.75

s

3.122499

t

0.202548

since 0.202548 is << than 2.306 the null hypothesis
cannot be rejected.

Conclusion 1

49 is pretty darned close to 47.In fact, I really did not need to do the
statistical analysis; I just wanted to flex my intellectual muscles since it’s
been too long since I used them.The
proc rates for the two types of weapon are the same.We can calculate number of procs per weapon
per minute.There were a total of 95
procs for the total of 50 minutes of firing time, with 4 weapons firing at a
time.This works out to 0.475 procs per
minute per cannon for this experiment.

In fact, the proc rate is based on the cycle.The cycle for dual cannons and dual heavy
cannons is 3 seconds long, during which time there are four hits counted for
dual cannons, two hits for dual heavy cannons.At the stated proc rate of 2.5%, this would work out to 0.5 procs per minute, very marginally higher than the proc rate as worked out in the
experiment, and well within expected randomness of testing.

Premise 2

The energy drain of dual cannons is less than dual heavy
cannons, and will result in a higher dps than the dhc’s bonus to critical hits.

Experiment 2

The aggressor is armed with 4 polaron dual cannons and 3
polaron turrets to simulate real battle weapons usage.At 5km and 125 weapon power, the aggressor
fires at a target until the target is destroyed.The test is repeated with dual heavy cannons
replacing the dual cannons.

Results 2

Time to Kill Galor Cruiser, seconds

Test

DC

DHC

1

32

32

2

33

29

3

32.5

29

4

32.5

29

avg

32.5

29.75

Analysis 2

Null hypothesis, Ho, is that the two means of the time to
kill are the same, or u1 – u2 = 0.Therefore the alternate hypothesis, Ha, is that the two means are not
the same, or u1 – u2 ≠ 0.We will compare
the outcome with Student’s t distribution.There are 4 data points per sample, implying 4 + 4 -2 =6 degrees of
freedom and we are using a one-tailed test, Ta(6) = 2.447 at the 95% confidence
interval.Therefore we will reject the
null hypothesis if t > 2.447.

n

4

4

average

32.5

29.75

sample standard deviation

0.408248

1.5

sample variance

0.166667

2.25

Pooled s^2

1.208333

s

1.099242

t

3.537971

Since 3.537971 > 2.447 the null hypothesis is rejected at
the 95% confidence interval.

Conclusion 2

The extra bonus to critical hits of the dual heavy cannon is
more useful than the lesser energy drain of the dual cannons, to the tune of a
nearly 10% increase in killing power under the conditions tested.

7 comments:

I am sorry but premise n°2 is completly wrong, DHC are more energy efficient than DC, this has been known for a while now, this is because of the difference in their firing cycle, namely 1 sec of shoting (and power draining) followed by 2 sec of rest for DHC versus 2 sec of shoting and 1 sec of rest for DC.

For short the DHC drain -12 weapon power 1/3 of the time while the DC drain -10 weapon power for 2/3 of the time resulting in a higher average power level with DHC versus DC. A forum user named Nagorak made EXTENSIVE testing about this a couple years ago and found the same (10%) difference in killing speed betwen DHC and DC so your empiral test are valid at least. Sadly that was done on the old STO forum, not the new PWE forum.

I'm different from the Anonymous on 12 Jan. I believe what he/she said is incorrect. The -12 or -10 weapon power is not per shot fired, it is per weapon cycle. Regular dual cannons are more energy efficient than dual heavy cannons. Yes, they fire twice per weapon cycle, but that does not mean that the -10 is applied twice.

Best reason to use dual cannons is if you use ONLY cannons. Rapid Fire results in more shots being fired with dual cannons than with dual heavies. This is simple logic.

If rapid fire increases shots fired by 50%, and over a 3 second cycle time dual cannons fire twice while dual heavies fire once, than in a 6 second block the dual heavies will have fired 3 times and the dual cannons 6 times. Now, I know this is a great exaggeration, but it shows my point.

For critical damage, dual heavies are better because each shot hits. But in situations where you can not guarentee 100% hit, dual cannons are better.DHC [acc]x3 are amazing weapons, but if you can not get them than you should go with DC [acc]/[acc]*2. More shots fired means that less chances all your damage misses.

if you fire a dual heavy, and it misses, that is damage gone. But for the same damage done, it takes more shots with dual cannons. This means more chances for the shots to actually hit.

I made similar tests and also tested acc/crtD/crtH although I forgot all the statistical maths since it's been so many years since I did it and not needed it since. I used plasma cannons because that's what I had to hand. Not sure about using phaser since I've not used them in a very, very long time but players could have an immunity to future procs (obviously for a small time but enough to affect the results).

I believe this test was done before the immunity to the phaser proc happened. If certain things are indeed applied per shot then a case might be made for DCs. It would be interesting to;1. Find out what does proc or get applied per shot 2. See how much of a difference it really makes to uptime of proc or effectiveness of applied buff/debuff.